Investing in medical tech

By investing in research and medical technology, we can go a long way towards fighting this good fight

Bangladesh loses many lives to cancer each year.

What makes cancer-related deaths all the more tragic is that most cancers are highly treatable if diagnosed early, but sadly, usually patients find out too late.

And when they do, cancer can be rather costly to treat, given our existing technology and infrastructure.

That is why it is a ray of hope that a team of talented researchers at Shahjalal University of Science and Technology have developed a technology capable of detecting cancer cells in a human body for much cheaper than existing methods.

The device, which can detect cancer cells without the traditional method of require blood samples, uses a method called non-linear optics to analyze a patient’s blood serum. The process of diagnosis takes an estimated time of five to 10 minutes, and costs a patient Tk500.

This is just a first step, of course, and admittedly, it cannot be relied upon 100% of the time, but it is the sort of innovation that our nation needs, where, despite the presence of good doctors, patients often opt to travel to neighbouring countries to receive treatment, shelling out large amounts of money.

By investing in research and medical technology, we can go a long way towards fighting this good fight on our home ground.

We congratulate the researchers at SUST for showing the nation that we are indeed capable of producing innovations in the field of health care, and that it may be worthwhile to invest more in medical technology and research right here in Bangladesh.